Severed Limbs with Morning Tea
by swabloo
Summary: Sherlock/Doctor Who. Because Sherlock was an extraordinary man, and all his life there'd been these small, inconsistent details that would tip his moments on their sides and he'd stop and feel the world spin. A series of interconnected oneshots.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: Because I just HAD to write _something _about the new Sherlock tv series.

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea**

John made a thoughtful noise as he sipped his tea, straightening out the morning newspaper. "Always did like the underdog," he said, putting his tea down on a coaster as he reached for some buttered toast. "How about you, Sherlock? Any preferences?"

"Hmm?"

Sherlock wasn't listening, but John knew that 'listening' and 'paying attention' were two very different things when it came to this man.

John looked across the kitchen, then put the toast back down. "Oh. No. No, Sherlock – no unattached limbs for breakfast."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Really, John. I'm not a cannibal. I know you wouldn't make it for me, and the nutritional value is just not worth how long it takes to prepare."

"Right. Of course," John sighed, "but still. Look, it's just not an acceptable practice over breakfast. Leave the dead people alone for an hour."

Sherlock glanced in his direction, eyebrow quirked. "John. I'm not having breakfast," He said in that tone of voice that mocked _really, John, I can see that the sky is blue_.

"You should. It's morning. Besides, _I'm _having breakfast, and it puts me off my toast."

Sherlock shrugged, but put away the human hand back into the fridge. John felt a little green – it had been _moving_. No, Sherlock playing with nerves and ligaments just wasn't a nice way to greet the day.

"I don't care for politics," the detective said as he sat down.

"What?"

"Your question, John, really. You asked me two minutes ago."

John looked back down at his newspaper. "Oh! Right. But – come on, Sherlock, politics are important – it's what runs the world. I thought that would be right up your street, figuring those kind of people out."

"Please, they're all so pedestrian. What do I care for men renting porn and having affairs? All politicians do is postulate before the government and the people and act as if they know what they're doing."

"Doesn't your brother work for the government?"

"He's not a _politician_," Sherlock cringed, as if the word was an insult. He gave a little nod towards John's paper, "The politicians that the media banters about aren't worth knowing. They're all just puppets. This man, for example –" Sherlock pulled the paper down so that it lay against the table, and scrutinised the photo. Sherlock seemed unusually quiet and focused as he frowned, turning his head in different angles. "I don't recognise him."

"The underdog I mentioned. New candidate for Prime Minister. Seems like a pretty decent guy – very charismatic. He's been on the news recently. I'm guessing you haven't watched much TV lately, though?"

"No, I suppose not," Sherlock said with one last frown at the newspaper, before going back to the fridge and taking his hand into another room, away from John's toast. A few minutes later John thought he heard sparks and hisses and maybe even a contained explosion, but by the end of the day he'd forgotten the brief moment of Sherlock's uncharacteristic response to the paper.

* * *

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"That infernal rhythmic tapping. It's distracting."

"Oh, sorry Sherlock. Hadn't realised I was doing it."

There was silence, as Sherlock went back to his laptop and John back to his reading. Seeing peripheral movement, he looked back up at John and saw, in the moment that John's focus swept completely back into his book, his hand, having been loosely draped about his mug of tea, hovered carefully over the table, fingers descending slowly, hypnotically.

Tap-tap-tap-TAP.

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"That infernal rhythmic tapping. It's distracting."

"Oh, sorry Sherlock. Hadn't realised I was doing it."

John went back to his book, and Sherlock kept staring, although tried to be subtle about it. Observation of subjects worked best when they were unaware of any scrutiny.

Tap-tap-tap-TAP.

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

Sherlock had a theory.

* * *

Sherlock frowned as he looked through the cupboards. Where had those chemicals been moved to? Honestly, it's not like he'd mix them up with sugar. Again. Really, having his experiments in the kitchen was just more convenient.

"John, where –"

Sherlock stopped when he walked into the living room and saw a man sat in John's chair. He was wearing John's jumper and John's trousers, and had John's book in his lap. It wasn't John.

"You're not John," he said, because he understood that even if it wasn't John, this man might have the same deficiency as every other man he'd met that necessitated the obvious to be stated aloud before further observation and conversation could continue.

The man's eyes widened, before he grinned, setting John's book aside and standing. This man was taller than John too, with a wilder countenance, a grin on the other side of sanity and eyes that reflected the stars. There was something inhuman about him.

"And you're not _me_. Well, now _this _is interesting. I'm afraid I've never had the pleasure of meeting you before, mister...?"

"Holmes," Sherlock replied. His eyes flickered up and down the other man, before smirking. "This _is _interesting. I hadn't been quite sure before, but face to face there's no doubt about it. So," he sat down, inviting the other man for conversation, his deep baritone voice layered with amusement and curiosity, "Saxon. How _did _an alien become Prime Minister?"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Yeah, okay. I thought it would just be a oneshot too... Might end up being a series of oneshots.

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea II**

**_04:35_**

**_To: JW_**

**_From: SH_**

_Bringing hand home. Clear space in freezer._

**_04:40_**

**_To: SH_**

**_From: JW_**

_Fine, just don't let it drip anywhere._

**_06:23_**

**_To: SH_**

**_From: JW_**

_Where r u? Thought u on ur way home._

**_06:24_**

**_To: JW_**

**_From: SH_**

_Takes longer today. In Cardiff._

**_06:24_**

**_To: SH_**

**_From: JW_**

_Why r u in Cardiff?_

**_06: 42_**

**_To: SH_**

**_From: JW_**

_Sherlock?_

**_06:44_**

**_To: JW_**

**_From: SH_**

_Can't talk now. Trying not to get eaten._

* * *

This hand was interesting. He'd had it a few days now; he'd poked it and fiddled about with nerves and ligaments. He'd tested the known chemicals that reacted harmlessly with human skin.

He knew he had to get it back to Cardiff soon, before anyone from the Torchwood there realised he'd stolen it. Normally he'd keep anything he took, but he wasn't entirely comfortable with the way that Harkness man interacted with him and kept trying to _touch_ him. No, Sherlock didn't want to give him any reason to turn up at his apartment. But he wasn't quite ready to give the hand up yet.

Besides, he was 98 percent sure the hand had glowed a little bit golden when he'd used a bit of aspirin.

Sherlock licked it – sucked lightly on the smallest finger – and his head tingled, and for a moment he saw stars.

John asked him something about politics that morning as he closed his eyes and felt the world spin.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **another idea popped into my head, so of course I had to write it. Hope you like it!

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea III**

When Sherlock was seven, he was kidnapped by aliens.

Well, no; that wasn't _quite_ right. Aliens had been involved, and they'd certainly done the same thing to him that they'd done to every other human they'd ever kidnapped.

Well, no; that wasn't _quite_ right, either. These aliens didn't try to kidnap you, even if _'kidnap'_ could be used as a term to describe what they did, in that they took you from your home and sent you far away and you were never seen again by those that knew you.

Sherlock never even noticed when his personal world was first invaded by aliens, although being such an observant little boy he did notice when the world wasn't quite the same as it had been before.

One day when he was seven, his mother took him and his brother to visit some not-so-close cousins of theirs. He found them all incredibly dull and stupid, and had thankfully been allowed to wander outside, so long as Mycroft kept an eye on him. Of course, as soon as his brother's attention was distraction for a moment, he'd taken the opportunity to sneak away and explore on his own. His cousins had such a big garden, it seemed such a waste not to see it all.

Sherlock, with wiry and agile little limbs, managed to climb through the hole in the fence and start walking through the field next to his cousin's house. He didn't mind going through fields – he was used to it, and he liked the sound it made when his boots would be sucked deep into the grotty mud and slurp their way out.

Ten minutes later, he found an old, abandoned house. He knew it was abandoned because of the bordered up, broken windows; the disarray of the garden outside and the musty, stale air that spilled out when he cracked open a window to peek inside. The house was full of dust and cracked wallpaper and paint, old and used, and from his position outside stood on the stone wall of the garden's edge, looking through the window he could see that the dust and grime on the floor had been undisturbed for a long time.

Sherlock hopped off the wall and into the garden, and the moment he did so he realised that something was _wrong_.

He frowned, looking about; his memory was as perfect as he could manage it, and with one look he _knew_ that something was different to when he'd first seen the garden.

And then, he realised – there was a statue in the garden that hadn't been there before. He walked up to it, looked up at it – it was at least six feet tall – and frowned. No, that wasn't quite right – it _had_ been in the garden, but further away. Somehow, this statue had moved when he hadn't been looking.

Sherlock wondered at that, then turned around in a circle. Back facing the statue, he saw that it had moved again, closer to him. Except that he hadn't even heard it move, or anyone else move towards it, and no one _could _have moved it in the less than one second it had taken him to turn around.

Even though Sherlock was only seven years old, he was still a tenacious and fearless little boy that was willing to do anything to get new results. And so, he walked toward the statue, slapped it in the face, walked backwards and then turned his back to it.

There. If it was somehow sentient, there was no _way _it would stay still after that. He rubbed his hand – after all, it had _hurt_ to slap solid stone. Sherlock closed his eyes, counted to ten, and then turned to face the statue.

Only, it had moved a _lot _closer than he'd expected, and when he turned he screamed a little when he hit it with his body and he tried to jump back a few steps and stumbled because _it's arms were loosely circled around him _and it had to be bigger than six feet with the way it was towered, hunched over him – and for the first time Sherlock regretted his actions and wished he hadn't slapped the _thing _because now that its hands were no longer covering its face it had wide, wild eyes and a gaping maw that looked like it was about to swallow him whole and rip him to pieces.

With a strangled gasp he brought his arms up protectively in front of him and his eyes scrunched up shut – but, after a few seconds of nothing happening but his panicked breathing, he slowed himself down and tried to relax, moving his hands away from his face and opening his eyes and looking back up at the statue.

The statue's eyes were still open and staring at him, only – it didn't seem quite so bloodthirsty anymore. Sherlock, mind focused on analysing what was in front of him, stared at the creature's face and realised: it looked _confused_.

Slowly, carefully, he raised his hand and poked its cheek. He blinked, and nothing happened – although the statue looked slightly more bemused. Sherlock closed his eyes and held still for a moment. Looking up at the statue again, he saw that it no longer looked quite so vicious (only in intent though, because it still looked viciously inhuman) and was staring at him openly, head slightly tilted and leaning in further as if it were trying to smell him.

Gently, Sherlock caressed both of its cheeks with his hands and felt the smoothness of the stone beneath his skin and wondered if it wasn't really stone after all, because it felt so solid and cold beneath his fingers and there was no way that actual stone could move so fluidly in such a short time to carve out different expressions.

Hands touching the statue's body, he closed his eyes and a flash of something appeared in his mind – a white, jagged scar of light – a gleam of ginger hair – shards of blue, and an empty night sky.

He quickly took his hands off it and opened his eyes, rocking backwards and leaning against the statue's arms as he felt suddenly dizzy and a little bit sick deep in his body, nerves tingling in an unpleasant way. He stared at the statue's face one last time and it stared back. Quickly, he dropped down to his knees and shuffled out of the statue's cold embrace, walking backwards towards the garden's wall without taking his eyes off it.

Only after he'd stumbled back over the wall did he blink and look at it again from the safety of the field. The stone angel stood alone in the garden, arms tucked close to its body, hands covering its face once more. Sherlock thought it might have been weeping.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **so I guess this explains why Sherlock is where angels fear to tread.

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea **

**IV**

When Amy was Amelia and a little girl all alone in a big old house, she met a ragged man from outer space filled with so much _energy _and _life_ that she could never, ever forget how real he'd been in the brief moment she'd known him.

She dreamed of being his sidekick or assistant or companion, of traveling with him and solving mysteries and finding the kind of things one only ever saw in storybooks. She knew there must be mysteries out there to solve with him, because he'd said as much and anyway, there'd been a pool in his library which was a mystery of its own, so if the very thing they would travel in was a mystery wrapped in a blue box that was only a bit bigger than a cupboard but could fit in both a swimming pool _and _a library _and _a doctor, then the places he could take her to _must _be more wonderful than all of that put together.

One day she was playing with Rory and his nan was making dinner and the woman had heard them playing 'raggedy doctor', and Rory's nan had smiled at her afterwards and given her a thick, dusty book and told her that if she liked mysteries then none were more thrilling than the ones in that book.

And of course she'd loved that book, and every book that went with it. And when at night she'd dream of the raggedy doctor, she'd dream of the main character in that book and think that yes, he would probably have high cheekbones like the doctor did and the same thrilling, intelligent eyes, but instead of that sometimes high-pitched rambling stream of words that the doctor had, this other man's voice would rumble low and deep like the earth because it would be the perfect voice for telling exciting, scary stories with, and he would be tall with dark hair and a long dark coat because that was what mysterious men looked like, of course.

And later when she was Amy and running or hiding for her life and she couldn't stop for a minute because otherwise either she or Rory or the Doctor might die or something else awful would happen, her mind would freeze and she'd panic – and trying to calm down she'd sometimes wonder what the Doctor would do in her place to save the world. More often, though, she wondered what the man from her storybooks would do because as much as she believed in everything the Doctor could do and had already done, the man from the storybooks was _human _yet still managed to save the day, so if he could do all that then maybe she could too.

After Amy had gotten married and was walking down a London street with her two boys she froze in her steps and her breath gasped and went still, because standing on the other side of the street and talking to a homeless person was the man from her storybooks.

Of course it had to be him – she'd dreamed him up and imagined him so often and drawn him as much as her doctor that there was no way she wouldn't recognise him. She stared at him, and then at Rory and the Doctor who had stopped ahead of her and were looking back and talking at her with worried frowns, but she couldn't quite hear them over the shock that swept through her whole body.

Amy couldn't hold it in and laughed, bright and clear – because when Amy had been Amelia she'd kept a lot of books beside her bed; books about myths and legends and Pandora's box and Roman soldiers. She'd had a lot of storybooks too – all about _him_.

Sherlock Holmes had always been something _more_, and Amy could see it clearly as she looked between her two boys in front of her and the storybook man across the street. Because she'd brought Rory and the Doctor back from _never _existing but they _had_ existed once.

She knew that the Raggedy Doctor was brilliant but the storybook man had _never_ existed. And as much as she loved the Raggedy Doctor, she knew instantly in that moment what had happened – because the Raggedy Doctor had just been her imaginary friend in a world where he never existed, but Sherlock Holmes had been her hero that lived forever in the books she'd read.

And Sherlock wouldn't be Sherlock Holmes without Mycroft or Watson or Lestrade or Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes was something _more _– when he breathed something else breathed with him; a hint of nothingness and everything and existence and time and _bad wolf_, and the whispers of it lingered on his family, his friends and his enemy.

And Amy laughed, because ever since she'd been a little girl all alone in a big old house, she'd had _existence_ pouring through her head as she'd poured her head through all those storybooks.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **Okay, so _technically _this one is a crossover with Torchwood, but same thing, right?

**Severed Limbs With Morning Tea**

**V**

"What's wrong, Sherlock?"

Mycroft frowned at the little boy sat by the fireplace. Sherlock was fiddling with something, a deep look of concentration on his face that looked slightly _off_.

"Sherlock," He said again, because Mycroft never liked being ignored.

The boy's head snapped up and his eyes met his own. "Oh," he said, then looked properly chastised. "Sorry. What did you want?"

"I want to know what's bothering you."

Sherlock looked at him, then back down at whatever was in his hands. "If..." He started, then paused as if unsure, "If... Well. When one eliminates all the possibilities, whatever remains, no matter how impossible, must be the truth, right?"

Mycroft didn't bother replying. _Of course. _It was elementary.

"Here," the little boy said, then opened his hands and presented them to him. "What do you see?"

Mycroft started to wonder if Sherlock had, ah, gotten into mummy's 'medicine' cabinet again. "It's a rose, Sherlock."

"Right. That's what I thought, too." He brought his hands back towards himself, then frowned down at it. "Rose..." He said quietly, then looked back up at his brother. "Rose's are just flowers, aren't they? They can't hurt you?"

"You can prick yourself on the thorns."

"No. That's not what I _meant." _Sherlock huffed, turning back towards the fireplace. "I feel like I could drown in them. The petals, I mean."

Mycroft kept quiet, feeling increasingly concerned at what his brother was saying. Sure, he was just a child – but he wasn't making sense; and if _Sherlock_, of all people, wasn't making sense, then something must be really, really wrong.

"They're everywhere," Sherlock continued, lost in thought, "In my bed, under it, stuffed inside my pillow, inside my mouth. I woke up and i couldn't _breathe_, there were so many."

"Where did you get the rose, Sherlock? There's none in the garden."

Sherlock looked up at him again, eyes a little distant. "It was a present."

"From who?"

Sherlock's face scrunched up. "You wouldn't believe me. I'm not sure I believe it myself. Stories are just stories and belong in storybooks, right?"

"Sherlock, who gave you the flowers?"

"_She_ gave them to me," Sherlock whispered as he looked over through the French windows into the night of the garden. Mycroft followed his gaze, and for a brief moment he thought he saw something glowing and golden and hovering among the flowers and a strange chill ran up his spine, but then the moment passed and it was gone.

Mycroft looked at the flower once more, and for the first time he felt like it was _wrong. _Like it posed some sort of threat. He turned back to his book and didn't speak of it again, not even in the years that followed when he kept finding an odd rose petal or two in the inside pocket of his brothers long black coat.


	6. Chapter 6

**Severed Limbs With Morning Tea**

**VI**

His nail tapped against it, bubble flowing up and squirting out with a slow, languid squeeze and it hissed and spat at him with promise that lingered through his fingers and he felt numb, staring out and up.

The stars in the night sky winked back at him, before he closed his eyes and lolled his head back towards the moving pictures on the screen. The sound was muted and the light was bright and stung his eyes against the darkness of the room. He lay across the rug, back sideways and hunched against the couch as he brought one knee up and then the other, arms winding around them then ducked his head between his legs and felt a scream caught up in his throat.

A hand clenched and left an imprint against the handle and he looked at the dark red groove it made against his skin, before he turned the point around and jabbed it down and hard into his arm.

Jaw clenched he pressed the liquid in and then pulled the needle out and let himself fall back down to the floor. He felt his blood pump pump pumping through as it caught it forward and pulled it back and suddenly his whole world suddenly felt brighter.

Of course he knew about space and all the aliens that weren't always green and never just little. He'd known for years. The knowledge seared his mind against itself as he spent each day thinking and not knowing and wishing he was out there, somewhere, anywhere – but not here, where it was boring old London and boring old earth when he could have been out there in the sky and finally seeing something new.

What he did to himself was toxic, he knew. Maybe it would kill him today or tomorrow, but he found it didn't really matter when he knew in none of those days would he find what he needed.

But these drugs – when he took them he maybe kind of forgot just a little, so that was okay. He stopped thinking about discoloured gravel underneath some victim's shoe or the smell of their hair or the slight smear of lipstick that had been missed on the edge of John's ear.

He'd close his eyes and maybe he wouldn't stop feeling the world spin and thinking that whatever he was doing it wasn't enough, it was never enough any day of the week, but maybe for just this one moment he could close his eyes and stop thinking and see stars and fool himself that he was on them.

Sherlock looked up at the television and saw the politician smiling wide and thought _wrong, wrong, wrong._


	7. Chapter 7

**Severed Limbs With Morning Tea**

**VII**

Sherlock wanted to learn about the stars. He found it in his father's study; slightly worn from lots of use. He took it down from the shelf he'd had to climb onto the desk to reach. He went downstairs. Alone in the dark room, he put it in.

The screen flickered.

He watched, enraptured in the black and white. Sound came through, old and layered.

"_One small step for man..."_

And then the picture changed.

It was blacker, somehow. And there was a face, long and thing with white, bone-like skin stretched across like someone had digged their fingers in and _pulled_.

Sherlock stared into its eyes, and it stared back.

"_You should kill us all on sight."_

And then the screen was grey again and a man in white was standing at the edge of the moon.

"_... One giant leap for mankind."_

Even after the video was long since over, Sherlock thought about the doctored message, wondering why they never mentioned that sharply dressed alien in the history books.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** Just this little thought I had…

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea**

**VIII**

In another world, Sherlock's father didn't die when he was young. He was an interesting man with hair as wild as his sons', with deep brown eyes that saw you and _looked_.

His mother had always told him how extraordinary his father was, and how (underneath the covers with a flashlight held in her hands, trapping them in a warm bubble of light) it was Sherlock, not Mycroft, who resembled their father in manner most of all.

In another world, his father didn't die when he was only two, his mother heartbroken forever after, sad and saying that she should have known, since he'd been ill for such a long time. In this world where he lived they talked, and Sherlock learnt so much about the father he never should have known. How he was tall and lanky just like him and loved the colour blue.

But Sherlock would see how his father loved his mummy so much more than anything in the world, even more than anything blue. Sometimes they would go outside as a family, and drag Mycroft with them so they could all lie down with a picnic and look up at the stars. His father would tell him a story about every single one of those stars, and sometimes his mummy would join in and then his parents would share this _look _that was sad and full of love all at the same time.

In another world, his father would brush his hair when he was four and mutter that he wished that at least one of his children didn't have dark hair like him, so the next day Sherlock would sneak through his mother's cabinet and then his parents would see him and go red in their faces as they laughed, and his mother would brush his fringe out of his eyes and say _I'm sorry dear, but you just don't suit that kind of blonde_, and Sherlock would pout because the dye was uneven and he still had tufts of dark hair sticking every which-way clashing against bright yellow, and he knew very well that he looked ridiculous. His dad would smile and crouch in front of him, and say that Sherlock suited dark hair very much, and his dad was thinking of dying himself ginger anyway, and maybe Sherlock could give it a go so that his hair could have the same fantastic multi-coloured look.

In another world, Sherlock was still a detective consultant and an insufferable roommate (his mummy just rolled her eyes when she found out how many people he'd had trying to live in his house and sighed about him gong through as many people as his father).

In another world when Sherlock met John, he didn't choose to live with him because of his interesting limp, but because he was a _doctor_, just like his dad.

In another world, Sherlock remembered looking up at a sky full of flying things, wrapped up in his father's long brown coat as his dad told him about the time he held mummy's hand so tight and told her to _run_.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** Hi guys! Guess what? It's my BIRTHDAY! I'm nineteen today! (holy heck where did all that time go?)

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea**

**IX**

That which is Sherlock _forces _itself into existence. It carves out the universe and makes the pieces fit. He is electrified into being.

Sherlock sends shockwaves.

Sherlock is small and pink and cries in defiance of all that was. He is born and sees all that _is._

Bad Wolf opens her eyes.

His lips are turning blue. The nurses worry at his silence. Then Gold begins to fill his mind.

A doctor slaps him.

Amy thinks, _life_. Rose thinks, _everything._

Sherlock sends shockwaves across the universe. He defies what was and defines what will be.

He takes his first breath.

Jack Harkness breathes with him.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Because. Well. Why not?

**Severed Limbs with Morning Tea**

**X**

She wakes up in a yellow room. There's a silence that winds its way around her fingers as she looks down and sees herself in a hospital bed. Except that this can't be a hospital, because she can't see any equipment or hear the drilling _beep beep _of her heart hooked up for all to monitor.

She trails one finger against the sheet that's draped around her. It doesn't chafe against her skin; it's soft, like how she'd imagine silk to feel like.

Something isn't quite right. Her knuckles aren't worn; there are no blisters that groove a handle into her palm. Her fingers flex and feel the tight elasticity of youth.

Her fingertips dance around the edges of her face. They smooth along the ridges and dip into her contours. She feels a face she hasn't felt in a day of forty years.

She lets her hands drop back to the sheet where they curl and twist the fabric. She feels a little numb and she doesn't know what to think.

It takes a while, but then she isn't alone. A man walks in with one of those masks on to risk against infection. He stares into her with blue eyes that look on her with fascination.

His name is Siger. He tells her about how some group called 'Torchwood' found her by accident. He tells her about the powercuts and the explosions and the chaos that fell in her wake as she dropped into their world. He tells her about how nothing will register her existence.

He takes her pulse and a sample of her blood, and writes something down on his clipboard.

"Is there something wrong with me?" She asks, voice hoarse.

He shrugs. "I'm not a doctor," he says, and gives her a stack of magazines and a pen. "But I know that you'll be in here for a while."

She smiles as he opens up the paper on top and shows her how to do Sudoku. She can't remember the last time she smiled. She only knows that for the first time in forty years, she doesn't feel lonely anymore.

* * *

She falls in love with Siger, and she knows it was inevitable. For a long time he's the only person to actually talk to _her_, not the enigma of her existence. He makes her feel young again, even as she remembers the cold piercing of aging alone that persists her memory in the dark of the night.

"I'm not good with people," She says, after he asks if he may court her – actually _court_ her (and she's not in some gentlemanly-Darcy-era, she checked). "I'm – I've been alone. For a long time."

He's a charming man, all aristocratic good looks and tall and _blazing _with intelligence. And those _cheekbones_, dear lord.

She doesn't know what he does for a career, but whatever it is it has a monumental amount of sway, because he whisks her out of the facility she'd been kept in and takes her to her home. She tries not to be impressed, because she's seen a _lot _of impressive things, but everything about him is magnificent.

He kisses her under the starlight and for the rest of the night, she forgets about Doctors and men with stupid faces and how they didn't save her.

She holds Siger tight and leans in as he cords his fingers through her bright red hair. Rory didn't choose her. So she's going to choose Siger and try to forget about a sky full of impossible things.

* * *

She holds her baby boy in her arms. He's small and pink and wrinkled and _perfect_.

There's another name that begins with _'M' _on the tip of her tongue and it fills her briefly with grief but she hides it away because _that _isn't her life anymore and she needs to focus on the new and the present.

She nudges at his soft head and breathes in his smell. His fingers reach for hers and she cradles him and can't imagine wanting anything else.

The edges of an old story she once read winds its way around her thoughts. "Mycroft," she names her new baby boy, and smiles into his skin now that she can finally be Mummy.


	11. Chapter 11

**Severed Limbs With Morning Tea**

**XI**

She was staring out of the window again.

"Mummy," he asked as he approached her, winding his fingers into the thick heavy fabric of her skirt, "What are you looking for?"

She smiled a little sadly as she ran her hand along his hair. "Nothing, love. Just checking if they're still there."

Sherlock looked up, but didn't see anything. "What? There's nothing there."

"No, love. There's always something there, you just have to know how to look right."

"How do I do that if I can't see what's there?"

"You gotta think beyond what you're used to. You gotta think – outside the box, yeah?"

"I don't get it."

"Well. Look outside again, love."

"Yeah?"

"And you say there's nothing there?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. Describe the view for me, love."

"Ehrm. I can see old Oak trees from here."

"What else?"

"I can't see out the rest of the window, Mummy, I need a chair."

"You're forgetting something very big, silly."

"What?"

"It's really, really big."

"I don't see it!"

"The sky, aye? Ain't that out there?"

"That's not fair, mummy! It's not a thing, the sky's just _there_."

"Oh? And what about all those stars?"

"What about them?"

"Aren't those things?"

"So? They're really really far away, are stars! And, and they're so far away that the really small light we see is years and years old, that's what Mycroft said."

"Ah, so they look small? Is that it?"

"Well, Mycroft said they were these great big balls of gas in space."

"Think about it, love. Stars might look small to us but they're really, really big. You never even noticed these huge big things before because they _looked_ small."

"Stars don't really matter though, do they? They're too far away."

"I wouldn't say that, hun. Trust me on this; a world without stars in the sky is a different world altogether. Even the smallest looking things can mean the biggest difference in everything."

"Oh," said Sherlock, looking up at the stars again. "Is it important that I learn, then? About the stars, I mean."

His Mummy's smile turned grim. "No, love. I'll do my best to make sure you never have to."

Despite his mothers words, Sherlock snuck into his brother's room that night and slid the astronomy textbook out from the wooden desk. He hid it in his shelf and dreamt of brilliant balls of light.

* * *

She was staring out at the stars again.

"Mummy," he asked as he approached her, winding his fingers into the thick heavy fabric of her skirt, "Why are you crying?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, love," she whispered out into the night, "The stars just make me sad sometimes."

In his shelf, the textbook gathered dust.


End file.
